XX. 5. THE ALDER LEAVED CLETHRA. 377 



XX. 5. THE CLETHRA. CLE^THRA. L. 



The name is the Greek word for the alder, which the plants 

 of this genus resemble in their leaves. They are mostly Amer- 

 ican shrubs with alternate, deciduous leaves, and white, bract- 

 eate flowers in axillary or terminal spikes. The calyx is five- 

 parted, persistent; corolla so deeply five-parted as to appear 

 five-petalled ; stamens ten, with pointed anthers ; capsule en- 

 closed by the calyx, with three, many-seeded cells, which open 

 in the middle. 



The Alder Leaved Clethra. C. alnifolia. L. 

 Poorly figured in Catesby's Carolina, I, 66. 



A shrub from two to eight feet high, showing a long spike of 

 white, fragrant flowers towards the end of summer, when most 

 other shrubs have long cast their blossoms. It grows naturally 

 and abundantly by slow streams, or in islets in deep bogs, where 

 it can, at most seasons, bathe its feet in water. 



The flower-stem is of a whitish green and downy, below 

 which the shoot is of a faint reddish color, covered with a gray 

 down. The stem at last becomes dark purple, striate with gray. 

 The leaves are inversely egg-shaped, gradually tapering at base 

 to a short, downy footstalk, pointed, and serrated with pointed 

 serratures from below the middle to the extremity, smooth, 

 downy on the mid-rib above, a little hairy on the mid-rib and 

 primary veins beneath. Flowers in long racemes, terminal, or 

 from the axils of the upper leaves. Cup of five short, hollow, 

 ovate, pointed, white, downy segments, which are persistent, 

 and, after the fall of the corolla, close round and protect the 

 ovary. Petals apparently five, oblong, concave, rounded at the 

 extremity, twice as long as the calyx, white with lines of green. 

 Stamens ten, long, cylindrical, unequal. Anthers with two di- 

 verging lobes, pointed at the apex, opening by pores below, at 

 length inverted, orange-brown. Ovary round, downy. Style 

 as long as the stamens. Stigma three-parted. Capsule obtusely 

 triangular, opening by the sides of the three cells, and contain- 

 ing many small angular seeds attached to the partitions. 

 49 



